New Orleans police had enough evidence to arrest the mother accused of providing her 17-year-old son with a handgun and orders to kill his street corner rivals, a magistrate court ruled Thursday.

Vanessa L. Johnson, 44, remains in parish prison, booked with being a principal to second-degree murder while her son, Clarence, sits in the same complex waiting for prosecutors to charge him with aiming at Robert Dawson and pulling the trigger repeatedly on Feb. 7.

After hearing from the same homicide detective who testified Wednesday at Clarence Johnson's preliminary hearing, Magistrate Commissioner Rudy Gorrell immediately found probable cause for the mother's arrest, and also refused to lower her $150,000 bond.

"Just the thought of a mother instructing a child" to do violence, Gorrell said from the bench, reflecting on the allegations as he denied a bond hearing.

But Thursday's hearing offered a glimpse into the type of defense tactics that the Johnsons' attorneys will tap to free the mother and son facing murder charges. Attacking the credibility of the two witnesses who fueled the police's investigation, and prompted the arrest warrants, attorneys Jason Williams and Clif Stoutz began digging into the facts of the case and trying to trip up a detective on the witness stand.

Williams argued Thursday that the witnesses were "best friends" of the victim, and at least one has a criminal record. But Gorrell reined in his booming cross-examination of Detective Ronald Ruiz.

"That is for trial, that is not for this hearing," Gorrell said. "At this time we can only go with what we have. You can have your day in court."

The Central City killing unfolded on the corner of Simon Bolivar Avenue and Clio Street, a short walk from the Guste public housing development, where police said the trouble began brewing when Dawson and Johnson scrapped in a fistfight, with Johnson suffering a knockout.

According to an unidentified witness who talked to police the day of the killing, the bruised teen went to tell his mother what had happened and her response was to give him a pistol along with the advice, "Go out and get them all."

Dawson, 17, was shot eight times and died shortly after at a local hospital. Just hours before, he had returned to New Orleans from a Hurricane Katrina exile in Dallas, his mother said.

Key witnesses

With no murder weapon recovered or any scientific evidence presented so far, police and prosecutors are relying on the word of two witnesses, who told police that they saw Clarence Johnson open fire on Dawson. One witness told detectives that he watched from a stairwell at Guste as Vanessa Johnson gave Clarence Johnson the gun through her apartment doorway in the 2500 block of Erato Street.

Williams and Stoutz, who represents Clarence Johnson, have suggested that the witnesses were involved in the fight with Dawson and that police singled out their statements while discarding other accounts that clashed.

But Ruiz said, "No other witnesses have been located."

Neither Johnson has been charged by District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office, which has until early April to review the two cases while mother and son stay in jail without indictments.

Vanessa Johnson is due in federal court today to enter a plea to a firearms violation that carries up to ten years upon conviction. Two days after Dawson's death, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office filed a criminal complaint against the mother, accusing her of providing a juvenile with a firearm.

Questions about photo

Police said they found a small amount of cocaine and a photograph of Clarence Johnson mugging with a pistol in one hand, and a wad of cash in the other.

"Is it real?" defense attorney Williams asked Ruiz of the gun in the photograph. "Is the date on it Oct. 31st? Halloween?"

Ruiz replied that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is examining the photograph to determine whether the gun is real.

Present at the hearing Thursday were friends and family of Vanessa Johnson, including her 27-year-old daughter, who later said that her mother is being vilified unfairly by mere accusations. Johnson was known at the Guste for selling sweets to her neighbors, and handing out toys to children at Christmas, her family said.

"The media is displaying her as some crazy woman," said Sarita Plaisance, the oldest of Johnson's four children. "That is not my mother. She is loving and caring and she loves children."

Johnson's youngest child is 10, said Plaisance, who added that her own children cry at night while missing their grandmother.

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Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.